Quotes from Fr. Richard Rohr

There is no straight line to Goodness, to Love, or to God. And thank God, Grace is always retroactive.

Thomas Merton, say it, as he so often does: "A door opens in the center of our being, and we seem to fall through it into immense depths, which although they are infinite—are still accessible to us. All eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact.

If people are to develop any deep spirituality today, and especially if men are to develop spiritually, they need to be liberated from self-serving worldviews.

I hope we can inaugurate a new humility in our use of religious language, which for me is the very proof that it is authentic.

Remember this: pure literalism always leads to a decrease in meaning. Mythology and sacred texts try to lead us and allow us to have the experience for ourselves. Through our experience we discover that encounter is not only possible but desirable. So often we struggle with experiencing our experiences.

When you get your "Who am I?" question right, all the "What should I do?" questions tend to take care of themselves.

The first half of life is discovering the script, and the second half is actually writing it and owning it.

We become what we are willing to see.

Responding to John the Baptist's hard-line approach, Jesus maintains both sides of this equation when he says, "No man born of woman is greater than John the Baptizer, yet the least who enters the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is" (Matthew 11:11). Is that double-talk? No, it is second-half-of-life talk.

Genuine humility is based on a realistic self-appraisal and a healthy feeling of self-worth.

As Dorothy Day once wisely said, "What the Gospel forever takes away from Christians is the right to judge between the worthy and the unworthy poor.

love, not death, is the eternal thing.